Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Portobello's video conference to discuss the results for the fourth quarter of 2023. This video conference is being recorded, and the replay can be accessed on the company's website ri.portobello.com.br. The presentation is also available for download. Please be advised that all participants will be only watching the video conference during the presentation, and then we will begin the question-and-answer session when further instructions will be provided. The presentation will be held in Portuguese, with simultaneous translation into English. Before proceeding, I take this opportunity to reinforce that the forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs and assumptions of the management of Portobello Group, and on the current information available to the company. These statements may involve risks and uncertainties, given that they relate to future events and, therefore, depend on circumstances that may or may not occur.
Investors, analysts, and journalists must take into account that events related to the macroeconomic environment, the segment, and other factors that may cause the results to differ materially from those expressed in the respective forward-looking statements. Before starting the presentation, the company will present a video about the results of the quarter. Portobello Group is completing 2023, and this year will be a landmark in its history. Its strategic advances have transformed the business model and put the company at a new level. It was a challenging year, with moments of uncertainties and the global market with higher inflation rates and also lower growth. But in Portobello Group, the strategy of diversification of business segments, channels, and geographic location has maintained our position as a leader in the category, with performance levels consistently above the market and also gaining market share in Brazil along the year.
In our internationalization strategy, we had a landmark when the factory in the U.S. started operating. The net revenue totaled R$ 2.2 billion year-to-date in 2023, and the evolution along the quarters allowed us to make up for a first half of the year that was more challenging. In the fourth quarter, we had an 11.5% growth in net revenue vis-à-vis the same period in 2022. We had results in all business units that were improved. We had positive operating results throughout the year, sustaining strategic investments that strengthen our business to the future. The EBITDA of the last quarter showed a performance level 29% superior vis-à-vis the fourth quarter of 2022, and a long 2023 EBITDA margin that was comparable was stable, maintaining levels close to 17%.
The year-to-date data for 2023, the adjusted and recurring EBITDA totaled BRL 284 million when we adjusted the effects of expenses with the strategic projects. The comparable margin reaches 17%. Net income also recovered, making up almost completely for the results of the first half of the year. In the last quarter, we delivered a net income that was much superior, and despite the adverse context of the market, the company has been managing its leverage very well. The resilience in our business model made a difference and made us have strides that we can celebrate. We had significant growth even in a more restrictive market, with over BRL 1 billion in sales in the year. The advances in the digital technology and the constant pursuit for operating excellence are reflected in the satisfaction level of our customers, with an NPS of 86.
We opened 16 new stores, and now we have 158 stores in the whole country. We reinforce our constant pursuit to achieve excellence in services, operating performance in all channels, and continuing our strategy of internationalization. We opened new markets in Central America, Middle East, Europe, and Africa. Our brand of democratic design that had had impact with the volatility of the Brazilian market, Pointer, has brought some initiatives that allow us to get a bigger space in the market, and they were reflected in the increase in our market share in the Northeast of Brazil. Our factory in the U.S., which was once a dream, has now come true. With technology that uses state-of-the-art technology, we have a historic landmark that shows the strength of our business. We have had advances in our organizational structure. João Oliveira is now taking over as the CEO of Portobello America.
Luciano Abrantes is the CEO of the Portobello Group. Luiz Felipe Brito, CBO of the Portobello Group, and Luciano is CEO. We were able to reinforce our resilience in 2023. We faced challenges, delivered growth, and important strategic advances that turned the Portobello Group into a new level. We continue very enthusiastically to build results for 2024 and go up yet another step in this journey. We are Portobello Group. In this video conference, we have Mr. Joao Oliveira CEO, and Mrs. Rosângela Sutil, CFO and Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations. I would like to turn over to Mr. Suzuki, who is going to begin his presentation. Mr. Suzuki, you may proceed.
Good afternoon, everyone. It is a pleasure to be here with you once again to comment on our results.
We are going to communicate not only the results of the fourth quarter of 2023, but also comment overall about the performance of 2023. We started with this video that provides a very good summary about the progress we've had in 2023. It was a remarkable year for our group, especially due to the evolution of our strategy, and there were important landmarks that we are going to discuss during our presentation. One of the key landmarks was the opening of our factory in the U.S., in Tennessee, in the second half of 2023. This is a very important step for the growth of our group. In our agenda today, we are going to start by talking a little bit about the market perspective, and Rosângela is going to talk about that and our operating and financial results.
We are going to talk about some updates and how we are evolving in these strategic products and also America. Also, we are going to talk about our strategy and to give you some perspectives for the year of 2024. Now, I will turn over to Rosângela. Good afternoon. Talking about the market, and specifically about the Brazilian market in the ceramic tile business, this is a summary of the evolution of the market. This business had a 9.2% increase in the fourth quarter of 2023. That was the growth of this industry vis-à-vis the fourth quarter of 2022, despite a drop when we compare with the results of the third quarter of 2023. This is due to a seasonality fact, because it's close to vacation time, so there is some deceleration in the real estate market, which is reflected in the ceramic tile business.
Portobello Group has had gain in market share in all its units. In the fourth quarter, we had a growth level superior to the growth rates of the market, with 21 percentage points vis-à-vis the growth of the fourth quarter of 2022. The market as a whole grew by 8% in this period, while our company had a 29% growth in this period. This chart gives a perspective on the base of 100, and in light gray you see the behavior of the market, and in the dark blue line you see the volumes of the Portobello Group in the Brazilian market. In the international market, but more focused on the North American market where we operate, we see an evolution that is still undergoing some adjustments in terms of volume of consumption of finishing materials in the U.S.
We can see that the consumption of local products is maintained, so they're more resilient. We see that in gray in the upper chart, that's local production, and also in the line above you see the market share, 31.7%. You have seen that this level has maintained its level. Another important index is housing starts. The annualized and adjusted volumes, so adjusted by seasonality, has also evolved towards the end of the year. It's kind of moving sideways, but there is a positive perspective when you analyze this chart in terms of its evolution over the years. Now, looking at the results of the company, the operating and financial results, we can clearly see as in the video, actually you could see it already, so I'm going to be more objective in my presentation, and we will leave the questions to the Q&A session.
But basically, in 2023, although we had a performance that was superior to the market in terms of business volumes, still this was a tough year and also required some adjustments, especially after the pandemic. Our gross revenue totaled BRL 2.2 billion, which is similar to the gross revenue of 2022. However, in the fourth quarter of 2023, we had an 11% growth, so we are now above the BRL 500 million in revenue in a quarter, which is a positive trend, and that is reflected in terms of results to the business. When we analyze those figures by business units, the perspective is the same for all business units. The second half was stronger than the first half of the year.
In 2023, in total, the performance was similar to the past year, but the evolution of the fourth quarter of 2023 vis-à-vis the fourth quarter of 2022 has shown evolution in all Portobello units. Portobello over 15%, and the engineering channel has driven this growth because this particular engineering channel has had a 25% increase vis-à-vis the fourth quarter of 2022, and Portobello Shop had a 5.5% growth. This is a business unit that has had a more consistent growth throughout the year. Pointer, in the fourth quarter of the year, had 19% growth vis-à-vis the same period of last year. Portobello America has had almost 14% growth vis-à-vis the last quarter of 2022. We are talking about the highlights related to that have to do with sales to home centers, where the performance was higher. In terms of geographic areas, we can see a Brazilian perspective.
Again, we see growth one half of the year compared to the next half of the year, beginning in 2022, but we've also had growth both in Portobello America as well as exports to other countries. In the video, we mentioned that we are now moving to different territories, to different countries, developing business there, so that is being reflected in an increase in exports, so not just Portobello America, but other countries as well. Now, focusing on margin, in the beginning of the year, we had higher pressure on margin because of price adjustments after the pandemic, and now in the second half of the year, we are now back to a level of 40% of gross margin in the group. When we compare quarters, we see that there is a slight pressure of 0.02% to be recovered vis-à-vis the fourth quarter of 2022.
Now, checking the gross margin per business unit, we observe growth in all business units. Portobello Shop has grown even more. In the third quarter, it has reached over 48% of margin, and the same level was maintained in the last quarter of the year. In the other business units, we've also had a positive evolution of margin, even in the Pointer business. We worked a lot to reduce the impacts of idleness and to increase volume because we wanted to provide more democratic products, given the economic scenario of that region. If there is no idleness, then our margin will be 19.5%, and we can see a growth trend there. As to operating expenses, we have had some optimization of operating expenses in all units, totally BRL 9 million.
We also made investments in strategic projects, OPEX, totally about BRL 80 million, which accounts for about 3.7% of our net revenue. In 2023, our level of operating expenses, had we not made these strategic investments, would be at BRL 640 million or 29%, which will be lower to 2022 in absolute values and in relative values, taking into account the net revenue. Investments in strategic projects involve investments in the implementation of Portobello America factory, including teams to ramp up the factory, to get the entire structure ready to begin operations, as well as expenses in Portobello Shop for strategic projects when we bought stores at the end of 2022. This additional OPEX was carried over a long 2023, and this is when we got the evolution in revenue, and then those expenses get diluted. Sometimes we make those investments to ensure future growth.
This is a perspective just of the year-to-date amounts, but if we consider the quarter results for Portobello Shop, we are now at full ramp, and in Portobello America, we're still in the ramp-up of this investment. The EBITDA of the fourth quarter of 2023 in absolute values totaled BRL 78 million versus BRL 61 million in the fourth quarter of 2022, 29% superior than the same period of last year. In terms of a comparable EBITDA, we are at about 17% of EBITDA margin. This comparable EBITDA is comparable if we had not made the strategic investments we made, if we had not added this OPEX. In terms of adjusted and recurring margin, we closed at 14% in 2023 and the other results in 2023. For net income in 2023, we had a minus 7.3% as loss. This was a year of evolution.
We had constant loss, but there was recovery in the second half of this year, so this is why we had a negative result of 7.3%. Had we not made those strategic investments, we could have had a net income of BRL 55.4 million in a comparable result. In the fourth quarter, we were able to report an adjusted net income of BRL 27 million. It's important to make a disclaimer here. Along the year, we characterize financial expenses related to the investments of Portobello America, but at the end of the year, when we close the year, we reclassify those expenses related to, which accounts for about BRL 28 million, and this is CAPEX. The financial expenses of the year were reclassified as CAPEX at the end of the year, and there was this one-off impact at the closing of this quarter.
Working capital is a very important focus for us to generate cash and to manage working capital. At the end of the year, we had improvements in all indicators of the cash conversion cycle. We had a positive effect at the closing of the cash of 2023. The investments made in 2023 were mainly focused on Portobello America, as we mentioned before. It also focused on Portobello Shop. The other units received lower amounts of investment, especially in technology advancements. In the fourth quarter, the R$ 87 million amount has had an impact of R$ 28 million, which relates to the reclassification of interest rates to CAPEX that should be diluted over the year in the other quarters, but they are basically concentrated in the fourth quarter of 2023.
In terms of net debt, despite the adversities of the year, we were able to manage our debt and to have good leveraging of it. We closed at a 3.3x the net debt EBITDA. If we exclude and to have a comparable amount, we will still be at 2.4x if we excluded the OPEX related to the strategic investments. It's important to highlight that at the end of 2023, we made the fifth issue of the debentures, totaling BRL 367 million, with the purpose of extending the debt duration and changing its profile. With this emission, we increased the average time of debt vis-à-vis 2022 by 1.2 years. We also reduced the average cost of the debt vis-à-vis 2022.
We don't see that on the slide, but as you know, there are some fundings being taken during this year to establish the schedule of the amortization of our debts, extending our debt duration, and improving our debt profile. Now, John is going to talk about our strategic products to give you a basic update. In all our calls, we've been talking about our strategic priorities. Our priorities are the same. First of all, we have the strategy of integrated retail, and this is more translated by what Portobello Shop does. We see that at the Portobello unit, but it's basically translated and seen at our retail unit, Portobello Shop. This is a business over BRL 1 billion in terms of gross sales.
An important landmark we reached in 2023, and we are going to talk more about perspectives for 2024 later on, but we still see room for growth for this business. Although we had a more diverse scenario in 2023, our retail business grew 13%. When we talk about same-store sales, we grew 5.1% vis-à-vis 2022. In the beginning, Rosângela mentioned that in 2023, we had a drop in volumes in retail and in the industry as a whole. In the category of ceramic tiles, we had a year of reduced volumes, but still, we finished the year in Portobello Shop with a significant growth, not only in sales but also in number of stores. We increased our network with 16 additional stores. Now, we total 158 stores, 133 franchises, and 25 of the stores are our own. Stores have a strategic value for our business.
In our own stores, we practice retail, so to speak, and based on our practice in our own stores, we can optimize our network. When we see the performance of our own stores, we realize that the business of own stores accounts for almost half of our retail business. If we consider the network as a whole, we will be talking about almost a fourth of our sales were made in our own stores, and the same-store sale was a little bit higher than the average. We have a better performance in the stores that are operated by our own team with a very high level of customer satisfaction as reflected in the NPS. The experience of our consumers is very important to us, and our NPS has reached levels as high as 86 or 87. This is only possible because of a transformation of our business model.
I've been saying that over different meetings, but it's important to highlight that once again. Retail was once a sales channel for the Portobello business, but since 2022, when we created different business units, this one became a business unit on its own, but it still looked like a channel. In the past three to four years, we could observe a significant transformation. We invested a lot in this business, over BRL 200 million that were invested in this business since 2021. A significant amount of those investments were made in our own stores, but also in digital transformation, a point I'm going to touch upon later on. We are focused on customer centricity, whether we are talking about our end customer or maybe the architect or a franchisee. Still, our customers should be put at the center of our strategy. That was a very important movement we've made.
The customer experience should be good, measured by the CRM levels through our loyalty program or through our operating services such as logistics, delivery, service. We've also seen evolution in those elements reaching a level of excellence. When we talk about transformation, it's not just digital transformation. We talk about operating excellence. We need to transform basic processes in the company, whether they are internal processes or processes implemented in stores or customer service processes. We need to evolve and to make those processes more automated and more modern. At the same time, we should bring digital solutions to our customers, franchisees, and our own stores. This is a very important evolution in our business. It's the way we do business, the way we manage our business has been changed as part of the digital transformation journey.
Finally, it's important to have this good relationship with architects because they play a crucial role in the customer experience. We believe in the value that architects bring to us. This is why we get a closer relationship with them. We have the greatest relationship program with architects in the country. Of course, this is translated into the number of stores. In 2019, we had 128 stores, 14 our own stores, and today, we had 158 stores, 25 of them are our own. I'm not just talking about growth because of the expansion in number of stores. It's also a growth in terms of the productivity of those stores. This can be measured by the revenue per square meter of store. What is the evolution we've had in terms of this productivity metric?
We grow in terms of square meters that we have in our stores, either by increasing the number of stores or the size of the stores. We have advanced because we had a little bit less than BRL 9,000 per sq m, and now we've reached over BRL 17 per sq m in 2023. This is only possible because of this transformation that we are going through in our retail business. Let me tell you about Portobello America. In the beginning, I mentioned that this was a major landmark to us. This is the biggest and more impactful project that we have today in our group. Portobello America was a major landmark in 2024 when the operations of the factory started. We started productions in July of 2023. We had the opening ceremony in October of 2023, but this project has not started when the factory doors opened.
It started back in 2018 when we resumed operations because we once, in the past, had a business like that in our group. We resumed a distribution business. Why did we do that? Because it's very important to work on our presence in the market even before we open a factory because sometimes the sales ramp-up cannot keep up with the factory ramp-up. This is why we started the factory ramp-up much earlier. We started by establishing a relationship with our customers who are mainly distributors in the U.S. so that we could start the operations of the factory. It happened in 2023. In 2024, this project has evolved even more. We started the operations of another furnace. We have one furnace for the regular products in terms of tiles for floors and walls, but special pieces are now being produced in the second furnace. We're starting that in March.
We want to have another full-time furnace in place in 2025. We've been talking about this project for quite some time. We expected the ramp-up of our factory to be faster. It has been slower than we had first envisioned. This is due for the scenario we find in terms of labor in the U.S. Rosângela mentioned that the market is not going through a very favorable time, but it's not exactly because of that. We don't have issues related to raw materials. The raw materials we use are of high quality. The factory, in terms of equipment and technology, confirms that we made the right decision when we created that project, but we still have these issues related to labor. We know that in the U.S., we have a shortage of labor, especially in the industry.
It is difficult not only to find available labor because we didn't have problems in hiring per se, but because of this scenario, what we feel is that the labor is not properly skilled. In the beginning of any operation, we need to work on that, and sometimes we face some difficulties. We needed to reduce the acceleration of the factory ramp-up, not the commercial ramp-up, and we have made significant strides related to that. In the past month, we have had very stable operations in the factory. That's crucial to our project. We're starting another line, as I mentioned, a line that will produce special pieces. I will go back to this point when I talk about the expectations for 2024, but obviously, we want to meet the targets for this project.
Another important point that recently happened in January was related to changes we've had in our management team. In the last year, we also had some changes, and in January, once again, we were able to promote important changes. Luiz Felipe Brito, that used to be the CEO of Portobello America, that worked in the structuring phase of the project, is now back to the group, and he took over the position of business development. He's a CBDO. He's being replaced by João Henrique Oliveira. He used to be CEO of Portobello, so he's taking over as CEO of Portobello America. Luciano Abrantes, that at the beginning of last year had joined us as a CTO, is now taking the interim position of CEO at the unit of Portobello.
Finally, focusing on a very important topic to our business, which is innovation, design, and also brand management, we have Cristiane Ferreira. She already had this role at Portobello Shop, and now she's taking over this position of Chief Creative Officer for the Portobello Group, a CCO. Those moves have been very important because they connect deeply to our strategies. It's important to create a structure and to place our talents there to make our strategy viable. Before we move to the perspectives for the prospects for 2024, I would like to give you a summary of 2023. From the market perspective, 2023 was an adverse year. It was a year of adversities with dropping consumption of ceramic tiles anywhere in the world. That was also true for our two main markets, U.S. and Brazil, both in retail and also to the industry.
Yet, we're still able to make significant improvements in our business. We closed with the same level of sales, but in terms of evolution in the year, quarter after quarter, or comparing the two halves of the year, we have shown significant and constant growth in profitability. Right now, in our group, we are at a point where we've had investments over the years connected to the strategy that I mentioned, and now we are at a transition point, from a market with adversities to a moment of more mature investments. We also have those investments playing a role in our leveraging. Our leveraging is above the level we are pursuing. We expected to have 2-2.5 times in leverages. Today, we are 2.3, but that's very important to what I'm going to talk about related to 2024 and what we plan to do this year.
In 2023, we were able to maintain our strategy and make advances in it, and at the same time, to maintain good results despite the adversities. This is what we expect for 2024. In this scenario, at the end of 2023, we see that in 2024, we are going to rip the fruits of our investments from previous years. This is true to Brazil and more specifically to integrated retail. We made investments in Portobello. We made investments in Pointer. Now, we are going to rip the fruit. We are not going to plant so many seeds, but we are going to rip more fruits. Given the leveraging we had last year, our business wants to focus on ripping those benefits, increasing cash flow, and reducing our leveraging. Pursuing this level that I mentioned, of course, we need to pursue this level of 2-2.5 times in leveraging.
This is our goal until the end of the year. This is a year when we're still going to see growth, especially in Portobello America. We are still in the middle of a ramp-up in Portobello America. We have had good evolution in the past month, and we foresee an EBITDA break-even of this business between the second and the third quarter of 2024 for Portobello America. At the end of the year, we hope to have good levels of profitability for our group. In that alone, our results are being taken to a different level. Portobello Shop will continue its business, so we're basically executing our strategy to increase the potentials in our retail value proposition and the transformation that I mentioned related. Transformation in terms of design, products, customer experience, implementation of digital solutions.
Of course, we also want to grow in terms of sales in our B2B network leveraged by the increased number of stores. In Portobello, following the trends of the fourth quarter, we will grow in all channels. One of the highlights is the internationalization of Portobello business. This goes back to our core value: products, mix of products, with innovation in design and products, and gaining market share as we have in 2023. Similarly, for Pointer, we have advanced a lot in terms of market strategy. For this particular group, we focus on small to medium-sized resellers. We are developing a relationship model with those resellers of small size in the North and in the Northeast of Brazil. We have had good results in terms of growth and profitability, and still focused on the home center channel, which is very relevant to our business.
Ultimately, in 2024, we plan to maintain our strategy, to rip the fruits from that strategy, to leverage the company, and now I would like Rosângela to give us an economic-financial perspective of what we expect for 2024. Along the lines of what João mentioned in terms of a financial-economic perspective, we need to pursue growth on this base of investments we've made. Our CAPEX will move to a level that is much lower than previous years because it will be a maintenance CAPEX. We will not make so many investments in terms of technology updates, only what is required to maintain the level of quality that we have in our business. In terms of expense management and cash management, we want to be very strict in this management. We will use a matrix like management of expenses, also management of cash generation.
This is true for all lines: customers, suppliers, especially management of inventories. We will focus on our portfolio, the profitability of our stocks, the turnover of our stocks because we want this year to be a year where we generate net income and reduce the leveraging of the company so that in 2024, we will gradually go back to the indebtedness level that is more comfortable for our business, which is lower than 2.5x, close to 2x the EBITDA.
We will now begin the Q&A session for investors and analysts. If you wish to ask a question by audio, please press the raise-your-hand button. If your question is answered, you may exit the queue by clicking the lower-your-hand button. Questions can also be asked in writing in the Q&A option. Please wait while we collect questions. Our first question comes from Gabriel Duarte from Ticker Research.
It's in writing. He says, "Hello. Congratulations on the results." We have two questions. The expectations for 2024 are to reduce the CAPEX, especially after completing the investments at Portobello America. Could you share with us the amount you expect to spend with CAPEX along 2024? Finally, we would like to hear about perspectives related to indebtedness and dividends of the company along 2024. Thank you. Hello, Gabriel. Thank you for your question. Thank you also for congratulating us on our results. At the end of our presentation, we touched on those two points. Our expectations for CAPEX are more like a maintenance CAPEX, which is going to be a percentage of depreciation, around 50% of depreciation. In terms of leveraging, I also talked about our strategy in terms of positive evolution along the year. This is how we are building 2024. He also asked about dividends.
We closed with loss in 2023, so we do not expect to distribute dividends related to 2023. This is a decision taken at the assembly meeting, but the management does not suggest distributing dividends for this year.
Our next question is in writing and is from Fabio, who says, "In the fourth quarter, the result of Portobello America was close to R$ 56 million in the quarter." For this result, what was the percentage of occupancy of the new factory in the U.S.? I don't know if I understood your question. Can you repeat that, please? Fabio says, "In the fourth quarter, the results of Portobello America were close to R$ 56 million in the quarter." For this result, what was the percentage of occupancy level of the new factory in the U.S.?
Thank you, Fabio. Now I understood your question. We've been witnessing a ramp-up of the factory.
It's difficult to talk about utilization rate or occupancy rate because we are running the lines as expected in the industrial ramp-up plan. But going back to your point, I think that based on the capacity we have in the factory operating with one furnace, we are at about 70% or 80% of our nominal or rated production capacity. This is aligned with the ramp-up plans. We de-accelerated this ramp-up. We reduced the speed of ramp-up because we needed to upskill our labor. It's a good occupancy or utilization rate considering the factory has just begun operating.
Let me remind you that if you want to ask a question by audio, you should press the button raise-your-hand, or you can also send your question in the Q&A option. Please wait while we collect more questions. The next question comes from Victoria Lopez with uncertain
She says, "Knowing that Portobello America was a great choice, I would like to understand your rationale to choose the U.S. as a strategy to go into the external market, the international market."
That's a good question, Victoria. Thank you for asking it. This is a project we've been working on since 2017, 2018. In the beginning of this project, we wanted to make Portobello an international company, pursue new avenues of growth, but also trying to diversify risk because our segments go through cycles. By having presence in other geographical locations, we can offset this cyclic behavior that we see in our business. It was natural for us to look at the Americas business because it's closer to where we are for logistics purposes, for the synergies we saw there. We analyzed different businesses in the Americas, and it was a natural choice.
We chose the U.S. not just because of how big and stable that market is, but also because of our market, of our segment, and how it behaves. The American market is predominantly served by imported goods. 70% of products in this segment are imported. Local producers are now more competitive because this segment is requiring a higher level of service, and if you're a local manufacturer, you are able to provide a higher level of service. The made-in-U.S.A. logo is something that is widely appreciated by Americans, and also because of increased costs in energy and gas. In the U.S., natural gas is one of the cheapest in the world because of shale gas. Local producers became more productive, and they became more important, and we have room for growth in the U.S. This is part of the rationale we used to choose the U.S.
Specifically, we chose Tennessee, and that was a very important choice because from Tennessee, we get a lot of good competitiveness in terms of logistics because we can cover very competitively a good area of the U.S. The state of Tennessee has also become a cluster, a significant center of ceramic tile production because of availability of raw materials and also because the gas prices are very competitive in that region.
To ask questions, please use the Q&A icon. Please wait while we collect questions. Our next question comes from Bruno Taddei with KP Wealth Management. He says, "Good afternoon. Congratulations on the results you had in 2023." I would like to ask two questions related to the Portobello America business unit. The gross margin of Portobello America has maintained close to the levels observed in the fourth quarter of 2022.
Considering the ramp-up restrictions due to labor in the factory, do you expect to see improvements in those margins? The second question is, how does the mix between use of home centers and other distribution channels could influence this margin? Thank you for your question. Let me talk about gross margin. I've mentioned in other calls, but it's important to reinforce that. We naturally expect to obtain significantly superior gross margins as we move our sales to products produced in our factory in the U.S., but this has not happened yet because in the beginning of the production with the ramp-up and now with the slower ramp-up, as I mentioned, the initial cost of the first batches of production is higher. This is why we don't see these effects in the third or in the fourth quarter.
We have seen more competitive costs in production in the U.S., but there's also some inventory turnover that needs to take place, and only then we are going to see the impact on our results. I don't think we are going to see improvements in gross margins in the first quarter of this year, but as of the second quarter, we are probably going to see improvements in gross margin in a more significant way given the mix between the products that we brought from Brazil or products we had sourced in the U.S. with the most recent production of products in the U.S.
We start seeing this effect as we expect to see that reflected in the first half, but we'll see that more consistently in the second half of 2024 when this effect of inventories that were there will be excluded, and only then we're going to see the impact of products that will only be produced there. As to sales channels, there are basically two sales channels we have in the U.S. Our sales are B2B, so we sell to home centers and to distributors. It's different from Brazil where we do not have distributors as we have in the U.S. In the U.S., we have in the supply chain a significant participation of distributors who then send to dealers, to retail dealers, and only there we're going to see final consumers. It could be a contractor, an architect, or even the end consumer. So we serve those two channels.
Similar to Brazil and in other markets, the margin in home centers is lower than in distributors, not just because of prices but also because of the mix. But this is basically how we're going to do business in the U.S.
Once again, if you want to ask questions, please use the Q&A icon. Please wait while we collect more questions. Our next question comes from Jair Oliveira. He says, "Good afternoon and congratulations on your results. I would like to know if we can tell how much the domestic market is improving in this first quarter vis-à-vis last year."
Thank you. I don't know if you refer to our performance in the domestic market or the segment performance. I naturally cannot give you the results of our results at this point. I can comment on the segment. Figures have been oscillating in the past months.
There are a few months when the performance was negative and a few months when the performance was positive. It's still difficult to tell, but we expect to have a gradual pickup. We do not expect a very strong pickup. This is going to, of course, depend on the region, on the channel, the segment, but we don't expect a sharp pickup in the first quarter of 2024. The economic scenarios can help us, of course. Lower interest rates, a more controlled inflation rate, more growth, that, of course, helps in this segment, especially interest rates. Next question comes from Leonardo Piovesan with Quantzed. Can you tell us about expenses with inventory adjustments? When we closed 2023, we had an entry of accrued expenses of inventories from sourcing in Portobello America.
We began the business with outsourced products to be able to prepare the market for the opening of the factory. Now that the factory is operating at the end of the year, we had to make a provision of slow-moving of old inventories related to the outsourcing process
. Next question from Leonardo Piovesan is, "What can we expect in terms of working capital for 2024?"
As we mentioned, especially at the end of our presentation when we talked about prospects for this year, we expect to optimize working capital along 2024. The end of 2022 and also along 2023, we had a lot of idleness in the market, and in our business, there is a relationship between idleness versus inventory levels, of course, vis-à-vis the levels of sales.
This is a year of adjustments in terms of inventory levels, and we're also going to work in terms of performance in the payment dates for suppliers and customers. That is going to bring us some evolution in terms of working capital. We hope that it will help us positively in deleveraging and also net income because as we improve our cash, we depend less on funding investments.
Again, to ask questions, please send your questions using the Q&A button. Please wait while we collect more questions. The question-and-answer session is closed. We would like to turn over to Mr. Suzuki to make the company's closing remarks.
I would like to thank everyone who participated. On my name, on behalf of Rosângela and on behalf of the group, I would like to thank you all for your support, the support we have from our shareholders as well.
Once again, I would like to say that we trust in our plans, especially in our strategy. It is natural that in a project such as the one in Portobello America that we face some difficulties and challenges. That's what we've seen in the project in the U.S., but when we see the project as it moves on, it confirms a lot of the assumptions that we took in our project stage and that enhances our trust and our conviction. That's true for Portobello Shop as well. That is at a more advanced stage of implementation of our strategic project. It's already delivering very good results, and we are confident that we can do not only the business in Portobello Shop but all our business in Brazil will have a good year in 2024, and we will close 2024 with more profitability and reduced leveraging.
Only then we can resume our investments plans. Once again, thank you for your participation, and see you in the next quarter. Have a good day.
The Portobello video conference is now concluded. We thank you for your participation and wish you a good day.